I 
328 HOW WE OBTAIN A GOOD APPETITE. 
attentions of theirs brought vividly before my slumber- 
ing memory the assertion of a long-unseen messmate, to 
the effect that “the mosquito, though a small insect, had 
often been known to move a man weighing over two 
hundred,” and, further, caused us to return on board with 
good appetites, the result of the unlooked-for exercise 
which we had been forced to indulge in in sheer self- 
defence. 
We not only saw mountains and green grass as we thus 
cruised along, but would often fall in with one or more 
wandering whale-ships, sometimes homeward bound W'ith 
full cargoes, sometimes hove to under reduced sail while 
their boats were chasing a whale, and at other times 
riding to their uneasy anchor oft‘ some rocky shore while 
engaged in “tiying out” the oil of some captured mon- 
ster, whose huge carcass, after being deprived of its 
blubber, would bo cut adrift from the ship’s side and 
allowed to float unheeded before the wind and sea, while 
another of his ill-fated companions, who had all along 
been moored securely astern, would then be hauled up to 
undergo a like “stripping.” 
Wo would generallj' heave to or anchor near all such 
vessels, and communicate with them, in the hope of get- 
ting information in regard to a reported coal-stratum that 
we were in search of, or to give them tracings of our sur- 
veys, and were more than once amused at their peculiar 
mode of navigating. Upon asking one of their captains 
how he found the charts, he replied, in an indifferent, 
don’t-care sort of way, “Oh, pretty fair; I don’t find 
any thing much out:” and, upon our telling him of some 
of our previously-mentioned “innocent shipwrecks,” he 
